Kenya Is East Africa’s Music Powerhouse BUT…
You read the title right, Kenya is actually East Africa’s defacto musical powerhouse. There are no ifs, buts or maybes because it is the country that actually decides which stars will be stars and who will become a superstar.
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The numbers are in and anyone with enough brain cells to rub together to start a fire can look at these very simple numbers and see that this is a fact. If we are not feeling your music, you will not become a star but this is actually also a very bad thing.
And the reason I am of this opinion is that the data shows that we as a country actually betray Kenyan stars. We betray our own. I have gotten ahead of myself so let me get back to the very beginning.
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I was going through different statistics for the YouTube analytics of the biggest celebrities in East Africa. That means, Kenya, Tanzania Uganda but also for the greater East African regions such as Rwanda and South Sudan. What I found was very interesting because it showed me why Kenya needs to become very restrictive about who we support because as I noted earlier, we make the stars.
I was always of the opinion that Tanzanian artists are big because of the unwavering support they are given by their home audience but I found out that the secret weapon is truly just Kenya’s support. Think of anyone of East Africa’s biggest stars, Diamond Platnumz, Zuchu, Mbosso, Rayvanny, Harmonize and Ali Kiba. They get most of their love and support from Kenya!
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Can you imagine that? The main reason for this is because compared to our East African counterparts, Kenya has the best internet infrastructure. To add to this, despite Uhuru Kenyatta’s kangaroo regime and the insane amounts of taxes we have been subjected to, we still have the most affordable internet which means Kenyans can and often do enjoy online content.
The second reason is that we suffer from low self-esteem which manifests itself in our praise and craving for foreign content. It is actually very true that we do have a problem with supporting our own. Each of the most popping artists in the East African regions are given support by Kenya. At this rate, they should just do a “gratitude concert” and thank us.
Can you imagine how big Kenyan artists would be if we gave them the same level of support? It really only is Otile Brown who seems to get this level of support from us but even then, it isn’t enough for him to compete with the top 2 most popular artists in Kenya-he rounds off the top 3 but that only earns him bronze.
I mean, even Omah Lay gets most of his support from Kenya. He has a healthy support base from his own country and community with Nigerians really coming out to support his content and music but Kenya still takes the top slot, which is one of the reasons why he is as big as he is in Africa and not just in Nigeria.
And this opinion is borne out by the fact that when Kenya stops supporting an artist, their numbers suffer horribly and that is seen very well in Harmonize. He is the only artist I have seen on the list without a strong fanbase in Kenya and he is suffering for it, His graph has shown a very steady dive and his numbers have subsequently plummetted.
Imagine if we could get the same support for our own, Kenyan born talent? Or perhaps, what Kenyan artists need to actually do is to start claiming they aren’t Kenyans. Maybe Otile Brown would have been bigger had he come out and claimed he was Tanzanian. Or even Ugandan. We seem to only ever want to support our own when they win after the rest of the world has finally recognised our star.
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